Chapter 2

The Picturesque Trinity Alps

We departed Yolla Peak TP at 13,000 ft and didn’t turn again Until Reaching Trinity Alps TP at 9,500.

This graphic depicts our ground track from Yolla Peak to the Trinity Alps Turnpoint, otherwise known as Thompson Peak

A destination worth visiting. Highly prized by glider pilots from WSC – as a goal to achieve. Check out this panorama that I discovered on the internet, posted by a hiker. Shot was from atop Thompson Peak – the place I labeled as “Trinity Alps Turnpoint” in our data base when we created the file back in the late 1990’s.

Here is a close up of our track with the location of each photo marked on the graphic. I went to the trouble of locating each photo, just because the views are so spectacular and we were at a much lower than my usual. I was keeping Weaverville within glide distance and later I used Trinity Center as my divert field. However, there was clearly a light wind from the south and south west, bringing the invisible rising air up the ridges. I wasn’t at all concerned that we were at risk of getting low among the mountain peaks, as long as Tom continued to fly along the tops of the south facing canyons.

Photo 1

Photo 3

Photo 9

Photo 10

As we began our turn to the left I initially aimed the camera back below the left wing and then we proceeded to cross over the top of Thompson Peak.

Photo 17

Photo 20

Photo 32

Photo 41

Thomas had us running at 9,500 ft as I snapped the first of the photos, but we hit a low point slightly below 9,000 just before he found the thermal. I had snapped 107 photos, starting from 2 miles south of the Trinity Alps TP and I finished up we departed to the NE at 10,500 ft.

As we proceeded to the east away from Thompson Peak, I flew for a few minutes, just to convince myself that we would be OK if we proceeded further. I suggested that we should turn around and head for home no later than 3:15 P.M. – it was 2:30 at the time. I said we could probably make it to Mt Shasta before we ran out of time, and asked Thomas for his opinion. He concurred with the plan so I struck out in earnest to find a thermal that would get us on our way. We initially entered a weak thermal NW of Trinity Center, but played the shifting winds – and entered the better part of the same thermal at 10,900 and turned the controls back over to Thomas.

Tom exited that thermal at over 12,000 ft. which was enough to get us over to Mt Eddy where we arrived at 10,000 ft., as shown on this depiction of out flight track:

At this point we switched over from snap shots to video movie making.

Some of the highlights from the video are:

Change pages to the next Chapter to continue. The photos in the next chapter are really awesome! Even got